Now, a lot of the random thoughts that flicker through a sleeping person’s mind are indistinguishable from the white noise to me—those thoughts are off limits, I guess.

But when the sleeping mind puts together something like a narrative—a chain of thoughts, not just scattered ones—those I pick up. Whether I wanted to or not, at least within a certain range, the dreams of a living mind spread out like tentacles, stretching out, latching on, draining into me.

And I felt bad about it, because to the waking mind, those things are personal. Sure, some people share their dreams—but even if they don’t self-censor, they do fail to remember.

It’s weird how coy the sleeping mind is with the waking one when it’s so brazen in its broadcast.

It’s all right if they see that you have to go out back to collect yourself, to keep yourself from crying.

They say it’s understandable, though they don’t actually understand the reason.

Some people’s fates just can’t be improved, however hard you try.

You know who they are.

And some days they all come in together.

It’s hard to take.

Not crying is actually the easy part—there’s one easy fix, which is to find a target.

Sadness is holding on to pain.

But sadness with a target is anger.

So I took a break, sometimes, to be properly angry. There was a dumpster behind the shelter that had many a dent in it from my bad days.

Usually I made sure there was no one around before taking out my frustration. I thought I had that day, as well, but while I was waling away at the dumpster a soft voice came, saying, “Excuse me, miss?”